As you may recall I promised you a comparison of Blue Apron and Plated. You will not get much of a comparison as I am not going to hide the ball here, Plated is WAY better. And after seeing this post you should go back and read those with the confidence that I was being 100% truthful. You instead will get the story of my Blue Apron experience. I was going to do a usual My Shitty Kitchen post for all three of the recipes I was sent, but since none of them were that good, and I had issues with the food quality of all three meals, you get one real review in rant form. I know they will never do business with me again after this, but I do not care. It was terrible and I think you can tell where this will go from this first picture...

The meat leaked in the box and there was produce in there, no bueno. Also very gross. I almost threw it all away I was so disgusted.

MEAL ONE: Fresh Fettuccine Pasta (vegetarian)

Here's what I was sent for this.

These are cute and all but in all of them there was dairy, you should have told me so I could refrigerate!

Even though they repacked the mushrooms in their own labeling, there was still fresh dirt on them. This did not offend me because I like fresh food but that may offend the target market of this product. And those that are trying to get dinner on the table and don't have time to clan mushrooms.

What did offend me was the gray, floppy celery they sent me. This picture does not do it justice how yucky it was.

Luckily I had some in the fridge that I could chop up.

Looks pretty nice, but lacked a depth of flavor. I wanted onion, red wine or maybe more tomato paste. I am a former short lived vegan so I am not saying this as a meat eater.

MEAL TWO: Nepalese Chicken Tarkari

I was a little leery of the non refrigerated creme fraiche...

And then I got to the milky soft ginger. Ew, so gross.

I tried to cutout the softest milkiest parts and it was still milky and soft. That is not normal for ginger, even week old ginger! My peanut gallery said "DO NOT EAT THAT!"

The meal looked just like the picture! I was not that impressed by the taste of the dish, but maybe that was because it lacked ginger!

MEAL THREE: Meatball Ragout with Swiss Chard

I was most excited about this meal, but ended up very disappointed...

The ingredients. Meat is in baggie because it leaked.

I'm pretty sure demi glace needs to be stored in the fridge. The container should not puff up like it did. It almost exploded.

There's something fishy about that potato...It was squishy and had goo coming out of it. When I cut it open my sister and I were both nauseated. I cannot politely describe what it smelled like.

I interrupt to show off my good speller niece who wrote by sounding out onion while I chopped!

I rewarded her by letting her help with the chard. She has that sad face because...

There was a f#^$ing worm in there! Are you kidding me!?

Since I threw out the potato, I served over quinoa. My brother in law said "Aunt Missy this is my least favorite thing you have ever made for us" That is saying something, he's been around since high school and has been my guinea pig plenty of times!

Bottom line...I can understand if you are sending me food in the mail that the celery might be a little wonky, it does go bad pretty quickly, hence why I made that recipe first. But seriously, a piece of ginger and a potato that are rotten? That takes months at my house to go bad, I cannot imagine how old that produce was. The fact that the meat leaked in the packaging with unwrapped produce really gave me cause for concern. The worm didn't bother me as much because at least that gave me hope the chard was organic; but my sister and niece were super freaked out about it. C'mon Blue Apron, your tagline starts with "Fresh ingredients!"

The other thing that gets me is how this does not save you any time at all. I am not the target market as I explained in my plated post. But there was a ton of chopping, washing of mushrooms and no directions on where to store the stuff. If I was not comfortable in the kitchen and wanted to use this service to work my way in I would feel even more uncomfortable after this experience. I am a confident cook so it did not faze me. And yes I followed all cooking instructions except for leaving out the two inedible ingredients they sent me.

Maybe I just had a bad experience, but old ingredients for all three recipes and me and my testers not liking all three recipes they sent me make me think this was not a fluke. I also did not pay for this, my friend sent it to me for free just for fun. Blue Apron didn't send it to me, they have not paid me, neither has anyone else. This honest review just came from a self trained home cook with an open mind. My mind was blown, and not in a good way.

What is your experience? Have you tried this? Am I alone in getting the shaft from Blue Apron?